Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Tony Cox - (415)926-3105 <[email protected]> · Fri, 24 Feb 1995 17:53:15 PST

Dave writes:-

>Well, let me clarify a little bit. I think the position of APS (Bill -
>correct me if I'm wrong) is that password protection of the EPICS
>release is sufficient for APS. If other groups think they need the
>added protection of something like PGP for software that they
>distribute via the Software Exchange, then that's fine also. I have no
>experience with PGP, but I will endeavor to download it and take a
>look. My preference would be to standardize on one package like PGP,
>and not have a proliferation of encryption/security schemes to deal
>with. If anyone has a problem with PGP, please let me know via e-mail.

Now I'm a little confused! A password protection scheme (via FTP to a
non-anonymous account) behind  APS's firewall really won't help those of us in
the collaboration who are off site. Thats not what you are suggesting is it???

As I see it, the whole point of using PGP at all is to prevent the necessity of
having to pass cleartext username/passwords around the world, not to keep
others in the collaboration from getting the code (at least, I've not heard
this suggested). Recent events at SLAC and elsewhere lead me to conclude that
the internet is so insecure these days that you might just as well set up an
anonymous FTP site and be done with it!  But if APS is happy that non-anonymous
FTP will satisfy the contractual limitations on source code disclosure, I say
go for it!

Tony

ObAlphaPort: I've just got channel access running under Alpha/OSF1.
	     There are some alpha-specific config files which will need to
	     be tweaked. Looks like there might be a R3.12.0Beta9.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Anthony D Cox
Computer Systems Specialist
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
MS 69, Box 4349
Stanford CA 94305
[email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System